


starless and shadow

by skuls



Category: The X-Files
Genre: F/M, Immortal Scully, Post-Episode: s07e04 Millenium, it's an au i mean, post-col, sort of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-04
Updated: 2016-07-18
Packaged: 2018-06-06 05:40:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 16,952
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6740770
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skuls/pseuds/skuls
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The world didn't end. But what if it did?</p><p>(Millenium AU)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. one

**Author's Note:**

> Wikipedia saved my ass on this a thousand times already. My title came from here: (https://wolfgun.bandcamp.com/track/starless-shadow-2) because it sounds cool and a friend recommended it. The mythology is a damn mystery and all of it went over my head. I'm just here in the hopes that this won't be TOO campy. (almost titled “the fucking aliens are back (or i mean they were never here, this is an au)”)
> 
> This is a WIP that I've planned out fairly well, so I'm hoping I'll be able to finish. Hopefully. 
> 
> Warning for some violence. I personally wouldn't call it graphic, but what do I know? There will be violence. Warnings will probably get more specific as I go on.
> 
> (sorry for the inconsisties shiiiit i'm a fucking idiot)

**one.**

The world didn't end, he plans to say if it doesn't. But it does.

The apocalypse was never meant to be a quick thing. It was meant to happen slowly, over time. It was never going to be an explosion. Not with a bang, but with a whimper. He’d only been about 40% sure that it might, which was the part of him that urged on the kiss, thinking that it might be his last chance. The other 60% hadn’t expected it to, and he’d let himself picture what might happened if he didn’t. He’d been pretty sure he wouldn’t feel the heel of her hand across his cheek again. Maybe years ago, but not now. There was too much between them. He’d expected either a response or a quiet, embarrassed denial. And for a split second, he’d gotten a response.

The lights overhead flicker, and Scully pulls away, her eyes wide. For a second, he is seized with the terror that he’s done something wrong. Someone behind them says something about Y2K, but the lights don’t go out. The machines don’t shut down. A blue-tinted light spills through the window in the room on the other side of the glass doors.

Scully steps away from him, eyes widened in confusion. “Mulder, what…” she says, as if he would know what is happening. She turns and pushes through the glass doors, running to join the people gathered at the window.

A shiver runs up Mulder's spine as images flash through his mind of a living room with Stratego pieces scattered across the floor, light filling the room…

It's a challenge not to shout her name, but he still tears through the crowd as fast as possible. “Scully!” His fingers curl around her wrist, and he tugs gently, desperation settling over everything in a haze.

She turns to face him. “Mulder,” she says, eerily calm. She points at the window, and Mulder follows her finger. There is a ship outside the window. Proof, right in plain sight of him and Scully. If it had been any other moment in time, he would've pointed this out.

“Scully, please,” he says, tugging at her wrist again. He can't lose her again.

She comes away from the window, almost in a daze, like she can’t believe it. “The world’s ending,” she says. “Isn’t it.” It’s not a question.

Mulder nods, eyes still fixated on the window. They can still come for her, still take her away from him. It’s still a possibility, really, it happened with Samantha. He wants to wrap his arms tightly around her to keep them from taking her, but he still doesn’t even know how she felt about the kiss. The stupid kiss. Of all the times to make his move, he had to pick the fucking apocalypse. Of course, he didn’t take the story seriously. Did the zombies dying work? Or, more likely, the Colonists decided that this was a convenient day for their colonization. Just fucking great.

“Mulder, my mom,” she says.

He can feel her pulse throbbing wildly and rapidly under his fingers. He loosens his grip, and asks her, “Do you want to go get her?”

“No, no, wait.” Scully’s shaking her head. “She’s with Bill and Tara, in San Diego, on the base. They’d be safe on a military base, right?”

“Scully,” Mulder repeats. There are screams outside, a few shouts of surprise in the hospital. A man is lying on the floor, nurses crowded around him. “I think we need to get out of here.”

“You’re right,” she says quietly. She reaches down and seizes his hand, and they push their way through the scattered people towards the door.

///

They go out through a parking garage. Scully had driven them to the hospital instead of calling an ambulance, fussing over Mulder’s arm for a good portion of the way there, so her car is still parked exactly where they left it. She stares pointedly at his sling when he reaches for the handle, so he rounds the side of the car quickly. There’s no time, really, to argue about her driving skills, little legs (which is ridiculous) or no. She pulls out and almost instantly gets stuck behind everyone else trying to leave the hospital. Scully turns towards the passenger seat. “Mulder, what about your mom?”

He visibly pales. “Oh. Oh, God.”

“We could head for Massachusetts,” she offers. “Keep moving. It’s better to do that in this situation, right?”

Mulder smiles weakly. “Unless you’re up for looting.”

Two cars collide. Scully swerves somewhat precariously around them, and exits the garage. The ship has risen, but it is still visibly there, hovering above the street, above the tall buildings. “Scully!” Mulder says, a hint of urgency in his voice. His hand comes down on her knee.

“It’s okay,” she says, although she doubts it’s very soothing. The presence of his palm pressed against her knee is comforting.

He doesn’t answer, but she notices that his gun is lying across his lap. She drives away from the ship.

“Should we try to get to anyone else?”

He clears his throat roughly before responding. “No, um. I think the Gunmen will be okay. They have a bunker for this stuff. And Skinner. I should call Skinner and warn him.”

“This isn’t necessarily the end,” she says (although she doesn’t believe it). “We could still get out of this. We could make it.”

He snorts, already dialing. “I’m not much of a world saver, Scully. And what can I say. Up until this point, nobody else has believed me.”

Scully lays on the horn to let the car in front of her know of her irritation. “Sir?” Mulder says into his cell. “Yes, I’m sorry to wake you. I just wanted to, uh, warn you. I’m fairly sure that we’re being colonized by extraterrestrial beings as we speak.” He pauses for a second. “Oh, um, I’ll put you on speaker, sir. Scully is here with me.”

She maneuvers them around the car in front of them. “Mulder, I don’t think now is the time to be sarcastic and coy.”

Skinner’s voice echoes suddenly from the small speaker. “Agent Scully, what the hell?”

“Agent Mulder is right, sir. We believe that colonization is happening now,” she calls out. “I saw a ship outside the hospital window. Downtown DC is a zoo, what with everyone trying to get to safety.” She swears unabashedly as someone slams on their brakes in front of them. There is a sound of colliding metal as one car smashes into another. Mulder squeezes her knee.

There is silence on Skinner’s end. He seems to be surprised more than anything.

“Sir, we just wanted to suggest that you get to safety,” Mulder says. “Go into hiding, or something.” He hangs up the phone, and tosses it on the floor.

“Why is this happening now?” They’ve made it to the freeway, driving fairly smooth down the road, as quickly as space will allow. The blue glow of the ship still spills into the car, but it is fading. “I thought the rebels halted colonization.”

“Maybe they could only halt it to a point,” he replies tensely. “Do you think they’re taking people? Making more hybrids?”

“It could be.” He tenses as soon as the words leave her mouth. She remembers her abduction, fuzzy memories of a ship and experiments. “It’s going to be okay,” she says, although she has no idea. “We’re going to get out of this.”

He nods his acknowledgement, and grabs the phone again, no doubt calling the Gunmen. He’s never had a lot of people to worry about, never had a lot of attachments. Scully turns her attention to the road, and calls back the memory of his lips on hers, minutes before everything fell apart. _We really do have shitty timing,_ she thinks, and runs her hand under her collar in search of a bee.  

///

Mulder falls asleep under one of the jackets they found stuffed in the backseat after first checking on the Gunmen, and then calling Maggie on speaker so that Scully can check on her. It’s almost three in the morning. She didn’t plan to spend her New Year’s driving down a dark road with their guns resting on the console between them while she watches nervously for any sign of alien ships. She hadn’t even considered not coming with him on some wild apocalyptic road trip. There was no question about it - she knew she was going.

She stops somewhere in Pennsylvania, she thinks, after four in the morning, parking almost out of sight under the trees. She turns off the car, and looks in Mulder in the darkness. His face is relaxed in sleep, a stark contrast to how he normally looks during the day. For a brief second, Scully imagines scaling the console and settling against him, falling asleep with some sense of stability. His hand is resting against the console, fingertips brushing her gun. His gun is back in his lap, just in reach.

Scully moves her gun to her lap, ready to shoot at a moment’s notice, and rests her free hand on the console, their fingertips barely brushing.

///

Mulder wakes before her, and switches on the radio quietly as he wishes for coffee. He catches the middle of a news report. “-an unknown amount of abductions in major cities around the world,” the announcer says. “There are reported strange shapes in the sky, unidentified at the moment. Deaths due to rapid exodus from the scenes are estimated around…”

He switches off the radio with a slight shudder. Better not to know what lay on the other side. Better not to think about anything he could’ve done to prevent this (maybe nothing, maybe everything).

“Mulder?” Scully mutters sleepily from the next seat. She blinks sleepily at him, shifting her gun in between the seats.

“Hey, Scully,” he says quietly.

She gives him a petulant look. “You took off your sling.”

“For good reason, doctor. You can’t drive the whole way. You’ll keel over.” He flexes his fingers. “It feels fine.”

“Mulder,” she says sternly, crossing her arms. “You don’t need to be driving. Your arm is hurt.”

“Scully,” he says, imitating her tone. “Let’s face it, you’re not going to be able to drive the entire way.”

“So we’ll take breaks.”

He sighs. He would go on, but he already senses that this is an argument he won’t win. “Okay. So, what do you think? Should we keep going?”

“We should eat something first,” she says in her clinical voice. “Stock up on supplies. I mean, granted that things keep up the way they have been, then I have a feeling it won’t be as easy to get commodities.”

Not to his surprise, based on the news report, there seem to be no restaurants open. There is a gas station open, though, and the owner seems relieved by the fact that they are willing to pay. “Assumed I’d get looters first,” he says, unlocking the front door and letting them in. “Maybe I’ve been watching too many apocalypse movies.”

Mulder buys a cup of crappy gas station coffee to drink while they stock up on supplies. Scully piles lighters, cheap flashlights and a lantern, four pocket knives, gallon jugs of water, different over-the-counter medications, two knit caps, four pairs of gloves, and other necessities on the counter. He is on food duty. He grabs bags of chips, candy bars, an appalling amount of beef jerky, granola bars, and packs of cookies and donuts. At Scully’s glare, he adds some tiny boxes of cereal and bags of dried fruit. They leave with bags stuffed in the car, adding two more cups of coffee to their plunder. The manager thanks them and locks the door after they leave.

///

“We should have gone to Wal-Mart,” Mulder says idly as he tries to figure out a way to stash his new pocket knife up his sleeve so that it will fall into his hand with a flick of the wrist. Not the most efficient weapon, but oh well. They have a few rounds left on their guns, at least.

“Mulder, everyone is probably going to Wal-Mart. The manager told me that citizens are advised to stay indoors as much as possible until they can figure out what’s happened. They’ll want to be prepared.” She pauses, tapping the steering wheel. “That only applies to the US, though. I’m not sure what other countries are doing.”

“God, Scully,” he groans. “How many of them must there be… to conduct this global conspiracy, to get to so many places in one night?”

Scully shakes her head in disbelief. “I mean, if the universe is infinite, then it’s not a surprise, I suppose.” She sighs. “I never thought that the apocalypse would be this way, Mulder. I always believed in the Second Coming… seven seals… seven trumpets…”

“Maybe this isn’t the apocalypse, then. Maybe that’s still coming. Maybe we’ll live through this one.” He means it as some small comfort.

She snorts and smiles slightly. “Maybe.”

They're somewhere in either Pennsylvania or New York, the road strangely empty and lonely in terms of a holiday weekend, but very realistic for the apocalypse. Or the potential apocalypse, whatever.

///

They stop at a rest area in New York, after Scully’s been driving for so long that she feels like her fingers are curled into a permanent claw-shaped position. Mulder had offered to drive no less than ten times, and she always refuses on the basis of him needing to rest his hand. The rest area is abandoned, save for one car pulling out as they pull in. The scariest thing is that Scully isn’t sure if everyone’s hiding, dead, or abducted.

The water runs cold out of the hot faucet, and she scrubs her hands under the biting stream before leaning her forehead against the mirror with a weary sigh. This wasn’t how she would’ve expected to spend the first day of 2000. Writing up their case report, probably. Maybe she’d expected to wake up next to Mulder, her feet freezing, and him asleep beside her, or already awake, teasing in that voice he used that made her stomach twist… not on the run from the apocalypse. Not paranoid that they’d be attacked any day now. She sighs, and stares at her reflection in the glass. The memory has been weighing heavily on her mind ever since they set out. (Driving provides a lot of time to think.) She can still hear echoes of Padgett’s voice as he told them, _Agent Scully is already in love_ . And others: the ghosts who’d wanted them to make a “lover’s pact”, the multiple assumptions that they were together, the thought of Mulder asleep in her hotel room, on the very edge of the bed. His eyes staring up at her as he said, _I love you_. She can see their fathomless depths even now, remembers a thousand gazes that she had dismissed up until that moment. Until she started to pay attention.

She sits on top of a picnic table outside of the bathrooms, feet braced against the bench, while she waits for Mulder. The chill bites into her hands, and she wishes she hadn’t left her gloves in the car.

He exits the bathroom and joins her at the table. “Hey, Scully,” he starts, smiling slightly.

She leans forward and kisses him.

Mulder freezes with some slight surprise, and then reciprocates, drawing her closer. Her knit cap flops down in her eyes with the sudden motion. Her thumb brushes against his cheek.

When they pull away, he’s still staring at her with wide eyes. “Scully?” he repeats questioningly.

“I’m not upset about last night, Mulder,” she says, cold fingers sliding through his. “Just so you know.”

He blinks, smiles up at her. She smiles back, and climbs down from the table without breaking their linked hands.

“You look very cute in that hat, you know,” he says teasingly.

She punches him lightly in the arm as she adjusts the hat on her head, and squeezes his hand as they head back to the car. He swings their hands a little between them. For a second, she pretends that they aren’t trying to outrun the end of the world.


	2. two

**two.**

She waits with her feet propped up against the dashboard, hands burrowed in one of the pairs of gloves. They’re parked outside of Teena Mulder’s house, the only car on the street. Mulder went in almost half an hour ago.

The door opens, and Scully turns towards it. Mulder sits, face closed off, unreadable. He's alone. “Mulder?” she asks.

“She's not coming.”

“Your mom?”

He nods. His jaw clenches. “She said that she would be fine on her own. She… I don’t even know if she believed me.” His eyes close. “God, why won’t she ever fucking listen?”

“Mulder,” she says, although she doesn’t know what she can offer. She’s never thought very much of Teena Mulder, cold and closed off, never there when she needed to be, it seems. She remembers that Christmas Mulder spent alone in his apartment, the rants about loneliness in a haunted house, ghost hallucination or not. “I’m sorry. Do you want to stay here with her?”

“No,” he says. “No, I think we should, uh, lay low for a while. Just in case.” Mulder stares at the dashboard, hand braced against it.

“Okay,” Scully says.

///

They get a hotel room. One, because neither of them really wants to be running across the hall in the middle of the night to make sure the other is okay, and two, because although they haven’t discussed either of the kisses, Scully is still strung out on the hope that it will lead to something. There are two beds, though. Neither of them have suitcases. She piles their supplies on one of the bedspreads. The hotel is nearly empty. Not a lot of people stick around for the apocalypse.

Mulder disappears into the bathroom, the sound of water pounding the tile floor echoing through the room as soon as the door closes. He’s upset about his mother. Scully’s not sure why she expected anything different, and worse, she doesn’t know how to comfort him. She wants to go to Teena Mulder’s house and drag her back to the hotel room, tell her to come for her son if no one else (even though a selfish part of her is glad she refused, if only so that no one can penetrate their seamlessness).

She settles for distracting herself by another supply run. She tells Mulder, “I’m going to run out and pick some things up while we’re settled, okay?” He agrees and tells her to be careful, handing over her gun. Sometimes it scares her how familiar the gun feels in her palm.

Scully drives to the nearest town in twenty minutes. _Isolation is a good idea,_ Mulder had said. _They’ll go for populated areas._ She passes a few cars, a farmhouse where two children are carrying armfuls of wood into the house. She images that blue light falling over it all, and for a second, she thinks she remembers her abduction. Barry’s hand had been knotted in her hair, and the light had flashed in her eyes, blinding her. Snow begins to fall outside.

They’ve mostly avoided human contact by staying on the interstate and rural areas, but the Wal-Mart is crowded with customers. She passes parents arguing with their children, people arguing over what, exactly, happened last night. (“Those were the believers being carted up to heaven.” “No, it was aliens. It was almost certainly aliens.” “I think it’s connected to Y2K.”) Scully’s head throbs with all the theories. She’d tell them all to go home if she could. She buys a few necessities - clothes mostly - and gets out as fast as she can. Which isn’t very fast. She’s surprised stores didn’t come up with faking the apocalypse as a marketing technique years ago - crisis makes people buy.

She exits the door and walks through the fading light of the parking lot to their car. Lights flash over the ground like headlights fall over the shadows on a building, and she looks up to see that triangle shape hovering above the parking lot. Somebody screams. If it had been anytime else, she wouldn’t have believed it.

“No,” she whispers. “No, no, no, no, no.” She runs, almost sprints, to the car, fumbling for the handle with her numb fingers. The door swings open, and she practically launches herself into the seat, shutting the door and hitting the gas. She doesn’t slow the car until she can’t see the sweeping lights in her mirror anymore.

Scully wishes for a second that she had stopped to help those other people. But the rest of her is selfishly glad she left. The terror of being taken again leaves a gaping hole in herself, a scar, a wound. It has taken so much from her. She can’t let it happen again.

///

Mulder feels almost stupid with worry when the door finally opens and it’s her on the other end, snow caught in her hair, looking wide-eyed and panicked. He pulls her closer on impulse and kisses her chilled mouth, just to reassure himself that she is real and alive and fully here, before him.

He pulls away, murmuring, “Sorry…” and she pulls him back, fingers curling almost desperately into his shirt. He holds her closer, hand shaking with relief, even though she’d only been gone a couple of hours. It’s the fucking apocalypse. He thinks he has the right to be protective.

“I’m sorry,” she says finally, head buried in the crook of his shoulder. “I shouldn’t have left you here…”

He kisses her hand without a word.

“I’m sorry about your mother, Mulder…”

A thousand apologies are left unsaid between them, as usual. They both have so much to be sorry for. Mulder pulls her into the room, closing the door behind her, says, “It’s okay, Scully.”

///

They climb into the empty bed, wrapping both comforters around them. The heat is turned all the way up, but Scully’s teeth are still chattering. He wraps his good arm around her, something he’s wanted to do so many times but never felt like it was right. He’d stayed with her after the Pfaster case, watched her sleep with the bruises on her ankles visible, the contusions around her mouth, his shirt, too big for her, falling down past her fingertips. They’ve spent so much time in hotel rooms. He’s always been protective of her.

“When did you know?” she asks, voice muffled by the blankets.

“Know what?”

“Know. Um.” She sounds embarrassed, even for someone who’s face is hidden by a blanket.

Mulder’s suddenly amused. “Know what?” he repeats, kissing the top of her head.

“Um,” she repeats. “That you, uh, liked me.”

“Are we in middle school now?” he teases gently.

“Mulder,” she grumbles. “Forget it.”

“No, no, I’ll tell you,” he says, almost laughing. “It was the first time I met you.”

“Mulder,” she says again, in her best Mulder-you’re-crazy voice.

“What? Your senior thesis was very cute!”

“Come on. Seriously.”

“Seriously?”

“Seriously.”

“Okay,” he says. “Okay, fine. Seriously, I think a part of me always knew. But the first time I knew for sure was in that hallway, when you were sick.”

She intakes a sharp breath, like she is surprised.

He grins ruefully as he admits, “I really wanted to kiss you then. But I didn’t want you to… worry about me. I didn’t want to give you an ultimatum to live.”

“I lived for you anyway.”

He kisses her again, pulling the blanket over both of them. All he can see is the outline of their faces in the dark. She hugs him closer, leaning heavily against him.

“What about you?”

She’s taken aback. “Me?”

“Yeah,” he says, teasing gently. “When did you knew you, uh, liked me?”

“Well, I mean, part of me always loved you, Mulder…”

He scoffs a little, smiling.

“And I definitely knew that there was… something more after my cancer…”

“The sleeping bags thing,” he clarifies.

“And I thought a lot about what happened before the bee…”

“Do we have terrible timing or what?”

“But when did I know for sure? I was in the hospital in New York. And you’d fallen asleep with your head on the bed. And I woke up and saw you there, and…” She shrugs. “That’s when I knew.”

Mulder remembers. He had loved her so much in that moment, looking small in her hospital gown, her hair bright against the stark white hospital pillows as she slept.

“You should have told me,” he says, drawing out his words to show her that he is teasing. “We could’ve gotten started earlier, Scully.”

She laughs against his collarbone, curling closer. The radiator in the corner of the room rattles loudly.

///

The blue light is there again, slipping through the crack in the curtain, and spilling over the beds. Mulder is awake, but can’t move. He really has no way of protecting either of them. Scully’s arm is around his shoulders, their hands knotted together. He tries to hold on tighter, in case the light has come to take her. Neither of them move. Scully’s breathing remains steady in sleep.

///

She wakes suddenly with a gasp, from some dream she doesn’t remember. It was bad, she thinks. Scully crawls out of bed, socked feet padding the linoleum, and pulls open the curtains. A fine layer of white is dusted over everything. It is quiet. Too quiet.

“Mulder,” she says, pulling on the boots she’d gotten at the Wal-Mart last night because of the snow. “Mulder, I’m going outside to check the hotel.”

He groans a little as he wakes up, blinking at her sleepily from the bed. “Wha-”

“I’ll be back.” Shrugging on a coat draped over the back of one of the chairs, Scully steps outside and jogs along the breezeway to the main building. She knocks three times before pushing it open. The owners said they had an apartment above the check-in. They said they usually fixed breakfast, and that they’d be glad to share. The front room is empty. Scully pulls her gun, although she knows exactly what happened, and checks every room in the building. Nobody is there. Their car is still in the garage.

Mulder is waiting for her outside. “What few guests were in the rooms are gone,” he says. “I woke up last night. I think there was a UFO out there.”

Scully blinks. She wants to cry. “Three times,” she says. “I haven’t been taken three times. And I couldn’t do anything to help them.” She realizes how her words must sting Mulder as soon as they leave her mouth - it’s happened to him five times now. She steps forward and wraps her arms around him. “Why do you think they haven’t taken us?”

Mulder hugs her back tightly, his bandages scraping against her back. “Maybe someone is protecting us,” he says quietly.


	3. three

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> there's some inconsistencies with the first chapter that i JUST REALIZED whooooooops anyways

**three.**

The TV looms large and silent in the front of the room, but neither of them turn it on. Scully sits with her arms wrapped around her knees and stares at the blank screen while Mulder talks to the Gunmen on the phone. 

“Yeah, okay,” he says. “Yes, we’re both safe. We’re in Massachusetts, laying low.” He pauses. “I mean, I’m assuming they’re making more hybrids like Cassandra Spender. But they don’t want me and Scully. They took our entire hotel, but left us.” Another pause. “Okay. I’ll get back to you.” He hangs up, tossing the phone onto the empty bed. “Bad news.”

“What now?”

“Byers tells me that DC is closed off. Nothing going in, nothing coming out.”

“Oh, God,” Scully breathes. She remembers the black oil disease, the way it controlled people. “You don’t think…?”

“That’s exactly what I think. He said that similar things have been happening in other capital cities. I think they’re going to take out the governments first.”

“Mulder…” she says again, mind turning to her family in California, her mother and Bill and her nephew, still only a couple years old… “You don’t think they’ll go after the military, do you?”

The look in his eyes betrays his thoughts, and he hands her the phone without a word. Scully dials and counts the times it rings in her head, something she hasn’t done since high school, a nervous habit. Bill picks up after five rings. “Hello?” He’s angry.

“Bill, it’s me,” she says.

“Dana? What’s going on? Where are you? Mom is worried sick!”

“Bill, listen to me,” she says. “Have you been called into service?”

He sounds surprised. “Yeah, I ship out this afternoon.”

“Don’t go,” she says immediately. “Stay there. Stay and protect Mom and Tara and Matthew.”

“Dana, what are you...”

“Please, Bill,” she says, close to tears. “I’m your sister. Please trust me.”

“Has that Mulder guy been planting ideas in your head?” he growls.

Scully counts to ten, balling and un-balling her fists, before answering. “The government is being controlled. You can’t trust anyone right now. You need to stay home and protect your family.”

“Oh? And what are you doing?”

She can tell he is gearing up for a rant, so she slams the phone down before he can, and prays he listens to her, for once. Scully buries her head in her hands. “Oh, God,” she mutters. “I should’ve done something. This never should have happened.” She means more than her brother, really.

“You can't blame yourself, Scully,” Mulder says gently.

“Oh, can't I?” she snaps. “Because the way I see it, if I had believed you from the beginning, I could have tried something to stop this.”

He pretends he is hurt in an effort to lessen the tension. “You didn't believe me?’

“I did,” she murmurs. “I just never knew what to do about it.”

Mulder pulls her close, stroking her hair soothingly. He doesn’t say anything; there is nothing to say.

///

The silence is cacophonous in a way that makes Scully miss DC desperately, the familiar buzz of people all around. Standing in the snow outside the breezeway, and concentrating on the woods lying ahead, it almost looks like a frozen wasteland. 

She changes Mulder’s bandages under the flourescent lights of the bathroom, examining the wounds in his skin. “Lucky I didn’t turn into a zombie,” he tells her, pawing the air with his good hand and making some imitation of a growl. 

She laughs in spite of herself. “How does it feel?”

“Fine.” He flexes his fingers to demonstrate. “Very fine, you should know.” He raises his eyebrows.

Scully laughs again and winds clean bandages up his arm, fewer this time. “All set.”

“Thanks, Doc,” he tells her seriously and kisses her.

“Do you do that with all your doctors, Agent Mulder?” she says before kissing him back.

///

He has virtually no idea how to be in a relationship, and honestly, the apocalypse isn’t a great backdrop, but he is trying. He imagines taking her out on a date, flicker-y candlelight, small talk, the like, but it’s impossible to imagine. What would they talk about? The things they usually talk about? They get enough strange looks at the FBI. 

“I don’t know how to be a boyfriend anymore,” he tries to explain it.

Scully looks up at him strangely, cocking an eyebrow. “Somehow, I didn’t think those terms applied to us.”

“Well, what other term do you want to use, then?”

She shrugs. “We’re partners.”

“Partners who kiss?” Mulder teases, drawing his fingers up the length of her arm. 

She shivers, grins, swats playfully at his hand. “It happens more often than you think, Mulder.”

///

“I want to save the world,” she tells him.

She is standing by the window in his shirt and her socks. The white was too bright, even though the sky was layered over with gray, so they closed the curtains. The power isn’t out yet, although he gives it a few hours, but they have the lamps turned off and the gas station lantern in the middle of the room on the floor like a tiny campfire.  _ All we need now is sleeping bags, _ he’d said. 

“I mean it,” she repeats, arms crossed over her chest. “I want to save the world. There has to be a way to do that, right? This is a result of outside forces, not natural occurrences.”

“The Gunmen are looking,” he tells her. 

“If they find it, I think we should be the ones to do it,” she says. “You know the most about this stuff, anyway, and our FBI badges will get us places. Can you call them?”

He heads for the phone, kisses her cheek as he passes.

///

Mulder is the only one of the two who knows how to put tire chains on. “See, growing up in New England has it’s perks,” he taunts Scully as he fixes up the car. (They’d found the chains in the shed, figured the owners wouldn’t have much use for them anymore.) 

“Yeah, it puts all the work on you,” she replies from her perch on the hood. She looks down at him worriedly. “I don’t like you doing that, you know. Is your hand okay?”

He tugs on her foot. “Just fine, Doc. I should drive us out of here - I’ll bet you’ve never driven in the snow.”

“Oh, yes, I have,” she retorts, poking him gently in the ribcage with her foot. 

“Shifts, Scully, how about that. I’ll draw the short straw.”

She sighs, already knowing she won’t convince him. “Where are the Gunmen again?”

“Kansas, loneliest place imaginable. The UFOs won’t find them in all the corn.”

Scully slides down from her perch and kneels beside him, presses both palms flat against his back. “What about crop circles?” 

///

Mulder has a large book of road maps on the console between them, with their best route highlighted in green. “Back roads will be the best place to avoid people,” he explains. “I doubt we’ll see anyone, but if we do, it’ll be on main roads.” He’s driving for the first time since New Year’s; Scully couldn’t tell him no again. He reminds her of a little kid sometimes, all large, pleading eyes, and untempered excitement. She pulls her knees to her chest, and watches him. He chews absently as he drives, dipping his hand into a bag of sunflower seeds tucked in the cupholder. She reaches in at the same time deliberately so that their fingers mingle in the salty cellophane.

“Do you know what the plan is?” she asks him.

“The plan. Uh, no. The Gunmen guessed that the government might have files from their correspondence with them, and with the system down, they’re hoping they’ll be able to get it.” He shows her his hand. “Fingers crossed.”

Scully smiles, unable to stop it. It feels wrong, to be here in a car with him, smiling as everything falls apart. But she also feels more right than she has in months - or years, even. It's strange.

///

They find a family at a rest area. A teenage boy with a gun across his lap sitting on the hood of their van. A father standing at the edge of a picnic table, hands in his jacket pocket. And two little girls playing quietly. They stare at them with wide, uncertain eyes. The boy puts a hand on the musket of his gun but doesn't move to shoot it. 

“We’re on the run,” one of the girls explains to Scully. “We're not going to die.” Watching the two girls, one in a pink parka and one in a blue, she is reminded of her daughter suddenly, like she is often now.

“The best thing to do is to hide,” Mulder tells the father. “Keep a low profile. These… things that are here, they might want to come after you and your family.”

The father nods, doesn't say much else. Mulder is talking to the girls  when she exits the small building later. They aren't laughing or smiling, but they are staring at him with wide eyes, like he is the first good thing they've seen. She wonders if he thinks of Emily or Samantha. Maybe both. Two years. It has been two years since Emily now.

Before they leave, she twines her cold hands around his neck and kisses him slowly. He interlaced their fingers as she moves her hand down and smiles shyly at her. “What was that for?”

“Nothing,” she says, and remembers when he held Emily. “Nothing.”

///

She hadn't gone to San Diego with her mother this year. She couldn't go back there. Just last year, she'd been the reason everyone had come to Baltimore. This year, Bill had refused. “I'm not taking a toddler away from home for Christmas, Dana,” he'd said, and she'd understood. Despite what everyone wanted, she'd just skipped out. (She was relieved; they wouldn’t understand how abnormal it all felt at this point, how seeing her brother hold his son stirred up the jealousy she hid under her skin.)

“Seems easier,” she'd told her mom.

Maggie had shook her head with disapproval. “We want you there,” she said, taking her daughter’s hands. “We're your family.”

Her phone had buzzed in her pocket, and she’d reached without looking, thought  _ you're not my only family _ . 

She’d called him on Christmas Eve and asked him to come over. “Nostalgic for ghost hunting, Scully?” he’d quipped. He’d been over within the hour. They watched old Christmas movies on her couch. It hadn’t snowed. 

He’d given her a watch, probably around ten or twenty dollars at the pawn shop. “Mulder, are you competing in the Worst Gift Competition against yourself?” she’d teased, strapping it around her wrist. She still had the key chain on her key ring.

“It’s in case you lose nine minutes again,” he said with a goofy smile, fingers brushing her wrist. She’d shivered.

They stop at a hotel when the sky is streaked over with blood red. Mulder tips his head back and searches for lights. Scully steps closer and slips her hand in his. “Sorry I didn’t get you anything for Christmas,” she whispers.

He tips her chin upwards and kisses her. “You got me a lot more than you think, Scully.”

///

A groan comes from the other side of the door, and Scully is tearing out of the bathroom, knife she’d carried in with her in hand. “I’m okay,” Mulder says from the bed. “I’m sorry, I… bad headache.” His fingers are splayed across his temple, rubbing rhythmically. 

Scully lets a whuff of air free, and sets the knife down on the bedside table. “How bad?” She shoves his hand aside, and examines his forehead as if she could see the cause from the outside. Her fingertips dance along his hairline. 

“Pretty bad,” he says, smiling weakly. 

She grabs the gas station bottle of ibuprofen, and shakes two pills out into her palm. “Here you go.”

He thanks her as he takes the pills, but he looks at the ground the entire time, even as their fingers brush. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this part is p. fluffy (i think), but it's to cushion the angst i have coming in future chapters. have fun!


	4. four

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warning for terminal illness

**four.**

There’s that familiar shiver up the length of his spine. The day he’d found out that he was dying, he’d felt that shiver when he entered his apartment, before he’d even dropped his keys on the table. He’d looked up to see his sister standing right there.

In the moment, he hadn’t realized she was dead. She looked older - not the age she should’ve been older, but older than when she was taken. He had backed into a corner, extended his hands towards her. She’d stared at him with sad eyes.

It’s actually pretty easy to talk to ghosts. He ended up talking to his sister and his father that night. Finding out the truth. It had seemed a bit anticlimactic, honestly, and certainly not ideal. He hadn’t bothered calling his mother - apparently, he hadn’t needed to. 

The voice comes from his left, seemingly out of nowhere: “You should know, I was rooting for you, Mulder.”

“Hi, Melissa.”

She eyes him from her spot on the breezeway. “I’m serious. I knew this would happen eventually, I mean.”

“I’m glad you approve,” he says, rubbing his aching head. (He means it, despite the sarcastic bite in his tone). “Is Captain Scully going to come and visit me, too, warn me off in case I ever hurt her?”

“You  _ are _ hurting her,” Melissa replies. He flinches. “Or you’re going to. You need to tell her.”

He doesn’t want to tell her. They are happy. They are happy for once, in love and giddy about it. She still has hope that they can be happy after saving the world. For once, he can pretend that he _ will _ be happy, that this won’t end in her attending his funeral. So instead he says, “Why didn’t you ever come see her, when she was dying?”

“I didn’t want to scare her. I thought she would die, so I knew I was going to see her soon, and I didn’t want to scare her.” She pauses. “Now you, I have no qualms about scaring.”

Mulder snorts. “Thank you.”

“Not when it comes to Dana, that is. Not my baby sister.

He turns to face her fully, and she is all there and not there, eyes like Scully’s boring into him. He can see traces of that dying little girl in her face. He also can't help but note that Scully has grown older than Missy now.

Melissa surveys him quickly, and continues. “I know you love her. I’ve known ever since you tried to take out half the hospital when she was sick. And I know she loves you - the way she always talked about it made it fairly obvious. She needs to know, Fox.”

His head hurts. If it weren't for the ache, he could probably ignore the entire thing.

///

She smiles at him from their bed when he comes in. (She rarely smiles, but when she does, it is the kind that could rival the sun. Cause someone to spontaneously combust.) He feels a flicker of guilt for what he is about to tell her. “Hey,” Scully says, reaching out for him. “Head feeling better?”

“Yes,” he lies. 

He takes her hand, and she pulls him to the bed, wrapping an arm around his waist. She’s still smiling, tilting her head back.

“I need to tell you something,” he says quietly.

She looks at him in confusion. “Okay.”

They slip under the blankets, facing each other. Mulder grabs her hand, out of a pure blankness on anything else to do, to try and soften the blow. “Do you remember…” he starts, and then stops. Of course she remembers. “Spender, when he took me, and performed the brain surgery.”

“Yes,” she says. She’s starting to drift. She is confused, but terrified. Nothing about that brain surgery was a good thing, really. 

“Well…” He doesn’t know how to tell her. “When I was in the hospital afterwards, the doctor found a… tumor. And they couldn’t operate on it.”

Her face changes to one of horror. She stiffens next to him. “You’re dying?” she whispers.

He doesn’t know how to answer her. For a second, her eyes are wide and vulnerable. And then they narrow, and she is out of the bed, pushing her way into the bathroom and slamming the door behind her.

Mulder counts to five steadily in his head, crumpling the sheet in his hands, before following her. “Scully?” He raps his knuckles against the door. “Scully?”

No answer. He pushes the door open to find her sitting on the edge of the porcelain tub. A Kleenex is twisted in her fist. She won’t meet his eyes. “Scully…” he starts again.

“God dammit, Mulder.” She looks up at him, eyes blazing and furious. “Why wouldn't you have told me?”

“Scully…”

“I told you  _ first  _ about my cancer,” she snaps. “Before my own damn mother! And you couldn't even be bothered to tell me? I am your fucking  _ doctor _ !” Her voice cracks. 

“Scully,” he says again, some small plea.

“When was I going to find out? When they called me from the hospital? When I found you dead in your apartment?”

“I'm telling you now,” he snaps in return. 

“You should have told me earlier. As soon as you found out.”

“Maybe I didn't want to think about it. Maybe I wanted to feel alive.”

“Yeah, well, I love you.” She flinches, as if it came inadvertently. “So I should have been told, shouldn't I,” she finishes quietly. 

“I loved you when you had cancer,” he says, just as quiet.

“And I told you!” She bites her lip. Her fist clenches around the Kleenex. 

He watches her sadly. “Maybe I didn't want you to go through what I went through,” he says quietly. “Maybe I didn't want to see that look on your face.”

“Mulder,” she half-sobs. She leans forward, wrapping both arms around him and tugging him closer. He rubs her back in some imitation of comfort, but he has barely any left to give, really.

///

He hears the shower turn off, and minutes later, Scully stalks out of the bathroom, hair dripping down her back. She is wearing one of his button downs, rolled up at the sleeves. She doesn't look at him as she heads past him towards the other bed.

“Scully…” Mulder extends his hand, his fingers brushing her shoulder.

She tenses. “Leave me alone, Mulder.”

She climbs into bed without another word, without looking at him, and switches off the light. A beat, and then he climbs into the other bed, curling into the space she'd occupied earlier. He watches her for a second, curled under the comforter. She is tense; he can tell that much even in the dark. He shouldn't touch her. He wants to hold her.

He turns so that he is facing the other wall. His head still aches.

///

Scully wakes long after dawn, and looks over at the other bed in a moment of half-awake terror. Mulder is still asleep. He is still breathing. She slams the motel door as she steps out on the breezeway.

There is no snow in Ohio, but the air is still silent and chilled. She wraps her arms around herself. It was cold when she started the slow descent to death as well. As if someone can only begin to die in the cold, desolate silence of winter.

She’d thought it would be the last time with her cancer. Not the last time in a hospital, not by a long shot, because that’s not what their lives were. No, she thought it’d be the last time one of them watched the other slowly die like that. If she expected it ever to happen again, she would have guessed that it would be her again. She would go quietly, because there is no other way to go. Cancer silences everyone, terminal illness cuts off their breath and voice. Mulder is not the type to go quietly. She can’t imagine watching him grow weaker and weaker like that, watch the life drain out of him. He always burns bright, always talks too loudly, too much, and she loves him for it. She can’t see him go quietly.

There is some irony in both of them having brain cancer. Except that one of them survived it, and, by all odds, one of them won’t. She curls her hand into a fist and punches the wall. 

///

He’s sitting with his feet up on the motel desk when she comes in, and he immediately swings them down, looking guilty. “Scully,” he says, shoving her coat at her. “God, it’s freezing outside.” His eyes shoot towards her scraped knuckles with concern.

Scully sits on the bed, facing him, and sets the coat aside. Her knuckles burn. She breathes in sharply. She can do this. She has no right to be mad, really. “Mulder,” she says. “I remember what it feels like to be dying.”

He shudders. _ That will be me soon, _ she thinks.  _ Except I’ll be on the other side; I’ll have to live without him. _ “And I know that there were times when you were angry with me, or just upset at the inclarity of it all, but you were there for me  _ the whole time _ , Mulder. And…” She intakes a sharp breath, and pauses. She  _ will _ get through this without crying. She already fell apart last night in the bathroom. “And I’m going to be there for you, okay? I promise. I’m still upset that you didn’t tell me, but-”  _ I’m not going to ruin the time we have left. _

“Scully,” he says again. “You don’t have to…”

“I do,” she says, tears overflooding. She moves to swipe them away. “I do, Mulder.” She pulls him towards her, presses his fingers to the watch she gave him. “You see this?” she says. “We’re not going to lose any more time, Mulder.” Her mouth collides with his, desperation hot between them.

///

“My sister’s dead, Scully.”

“I’m so sorry.”

///

She cradles Mulder against her shoulder as he shakes out of a nightmare. “Okay,” she whispers. “It’s okay. I’m here. I’m here.” She kisses his forehead like a promise, an oath. 

“I don’t want to leave you,” he whispers. “I don’t want to leave you.” She holds his hand so he can't. 

///

The truth is that no amount of flowery language can romanticize it. Can make it okay. Mulder is dying. He’ll go somewhere that she can’t follow, into the fathomless chasms of the ground. And she will have no choice but to wait.

///

Hours after everyone had left, when Scully had gone into remission, Mulder had been the only one still there. He’d come in to say good night, and she’d caught at his hand. “Want me to stay?” he’d said, sounding relieved. He climbed onto the too-small hospital bed per her request, and she leaned against him, deeming him her pillow. He’d kissed the top of her head. 

Scully wakes up to find his hand pressed to his head again, grimacing. “Oh, Mulder,” she says, fumbling for the ibuprofen. 

“Scully…” he starts.

She presses two pills into his hands wordlessly. He swallows them, watching her. “I don't suppose,” he says, “that we can pretend nothing is wrong?”

“If you want to,” Scully says, because she asked for it and he deserves it. “If you want to, of course we can.”

She's never been a big pretender. She'll treat him normally, or as normally as she can, but he will still loom largely as dying in her head. 

///

Mulder stands outside, head tipped back. The moon is cloaked in black clouds, and the large expanse of the sky is starless. He stands in the shadows. 

Scully steps out beside him and leans into him. “Hi.”

“Hi,” he whispers, wrapping an arm around her shoulders.

The land is cold and silent, largely screaming the fact that it is dying. “I watched the news,” she says, nuzzling her head under his arm. “Casualties aren’t that bad at the moment. Everyone’s staying inside, mostly, it says. The government is unresponsive. DC is completely closed off.”

Some small part of him worries briefly for Skinner, but he doesn’t focus on that for too long. “I think we need to go meet the Gunmen, Scully.”

“You’re right,” she says. She kisses his cheek slowly. He can feel her hot breath. They breathe unevenly, his chest falling as hers rises. 

///

The land is achingly flat. Scully can see for miles out of the frosty windows. The fields are stripped bare. Winter is the perfect season for the apocalypse as well as illnesses, frigid and lonely. She drives, clutching the wheel too tightly. Indiana, Illinois.

Mulder is eating a bag of chip. The cellophane crinkles as his fingers hit bottom. “Scully, I think we’re running out of food,” he says. 

“We can stop,” she says. 

///

They pick a chain store that neither of them recognize. The parking lot is empty. Mulder goes to manually open one of the doors, and they don’t budge. “If no one’s here, we could break in,” he offers.

“Mulder,” she says, tapping the toe of her shoe against his foot. She steps forward and raps her knuckles against the door.

A man appears behind the fingerprint-smeared door. “Get out,” he says, his voice a low snarl.

“Sir, we're federal agents,” Scully says, holding up her badge. “We just want some-”

“I don't care. I laid claim to this place. Get out.”

“Sir, if you could just-” she tries again. 

The man raises the musket of a gun and aims it through the glass. “Scully,” Mulder rasps, closing his fingers around her wrist. He can't get his voice to work. 

Her eyes have widened, and she raises her free hand. “Sir, we don't want any trouble,” she says. 

“Then get out,” he says, motioning with the gun. Mulder tugs at her arm with some desperation. Why do they always end with a gun pointed out them, why do they always have to fear for the other's death? He imagines the bullet piercing the glass and coming straight at her, thinks that it will be some true and supreme irony if she leaves before him.

“We're going,” he says firmly, and Scully follows the tug of his arm this time. They turn and retreat quickly, Mulder not loosening his grip. They reach the car in a minute flat. Her head careens into his collarbone as she leans into him. He grips her tightly enough to convince himself that it's okay, he was overreacting, they’ve faced worse. But still. There is something terrifying about most of the world missing like a jagged puzzle piece, and UFOs on their tail, and someone pointing a gun at his partner, or him too, really. He rubs circles on her back.

When she speaks, it’s muffled by his coat front. “I’m fine, Mulder.”

“I thought he was going to shoot you,” he chokes out.

“I'm fine,” she repeats. It sounds like she is crying. 

///

He’s died three times, and she’s only attended his funeral once. She remembers the sheer, gaping horror of it all, everyone giving her sideways looks, confirming her theory as it applied to her partner. She remembers the weightlessness, the stomach-clenching awe. The first time, she hadn’t known if he was dead or not. The second, she’d known all along (although it hadn’t been hard to let the tears fall at that meeting, just imagining it was true, that he’d killed himself because of her). The third, it had been uneven, a conglomeration of images she couldn’t quite piece together. She remembers the loneliness, the empty air on the other end of the phone. Where did that memory come from? Hallucinatory death isn’t something people quite consider. She doesn’t want to face it again - the hollowness left when someone you shift to be the focus of your life is gone. 

She grips his hand too tightly. 


	5. five

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> there's some overall darkness in this chapter, as well as scenes of the death vicinity... however, it may be spoilers, but no one dies in this story, i'll go ahead and say that. 
> 
> also: this part is very campy sci fi esque, but hey, it's not like i had a ton to work with, right?

**five.**

The Gunmen are staying in some farmhouse that tempts Scully to quote  _ The Wizard of Oz _ . (She wonders if Mulder will tell her he loves her again, for her troubles, that's what he did the last time, too bad she didn’t recognize it earlier.) “Did you tell the Gunmen about it?” she says in a harsh tone, like sand scraping against the roof of her mouth.

“Um, well, the subject never exactly came up,” Mulder says quietly. 

She supposes she should be grateful that she was the first one he told. She is still furious at the fact that he didn’t tell her, and she wonders, not for the first time, when he would have. She imagines getting some call from the hospital, because she’s his next-of-kin: “Agent Scully, your partner’s in the hospital. He doesn’t have long.” She imagines him just collapsing one day, away from civilization or help, and she doesn’t know what’s wrong, much less what to do. She hadn’t done this to him. He didn’t get that call, he would’ve been furious. But then again, that’s the call that her mother got, isn’t it. (Is this the universe’s sick idea of karma?) She doesn’t want to watch him die with no way to save him - he would’ve burned down the world for her, and she is lifting it up, there’s no Consortium to bargain with, not even a hospital to take him to.

“Okay,” she says. “Okay. Let's go.”

He is looking at her with giant eyes. “Scully, if you need to talk about this…”

“I don't. Let's just go, okay?” She gets out if the car, feet crunching the gravel of the driveway. There's an enormous cornfield right beside the house. Stereotypical Kansas. 

Frohike is the one who answers the door. “Agent Scully,” he says, unsurprised but caught a bit off guard by her arrival. “It’s good to see you, considering the circumstances.”

“It’s good to see you too, Frohike,” Scully replies.

Mulder comes up beside her, brushes that familiar spot at the back of her back briefly before reaching out and clapping Frohike on the shoulder. “Everything okay with you all?” 

He nods at them, eyes sweeping the driveway before gesturing. “You all had better come in.”

///

It feels like forever since she’s been in a real house. The kitchen is piled over with dirty dishes. There are pictures of an unfamiliar family on the wall. Scully opens the fridge to find food - and better food than what they’ve been eating the past few days. Her stomach growls. Frohike sees her looking, and promptly sticks a lasagna in the oven. “The others are downstairs,” he informs them.

The basement looks more familiar, with computers and papers strewn all over the place. Langly is typing furiously on a computer, lost in his work, but Byers gets up and extends a hand to greet them. “Anything?” Mulder asks.

“We finally found the files,” Langly says excitedly. “The ones we’ve been looking for forever! The things we’ve seen…”

“What he means is that we’re still looking for something that could help us,” Byers adds apologetically. “We’ll let you know when we find something useful. You both look exhausted; you should get some rest.”

Scully nods gratefully. It feels like years off her life from the added stress of driving, the apocalypse, and Mulder’s tumor. 

“You go on,” Mulder tells her. “I’ll catch up.” He has some familiar look in his eyes, making Scully suspect that he wants to see the files from himself. Whether it’s out of pure curiosity, or a need to determine for himself what’s useful and what’s not, she doesn’t know.

She showers. Takes out the lasagna and eats three portions. Skulks around the house, looking for useful things herself. Whoever this family is, the best weapon they have is a kitchen knife. Mulder doesn’t come back upstairs. 

///

He enters one of the house’s spare rooms to find Scully sitting on the bed, glasses falling down her nose as she types almost frantically on one of the spare laptops. Mulder freezes in the doorway. She looks up at him in confusion. “What’s wrong, Mulder?”

“I…” he starts, halts. “I didn’t know if we…”

He hadn’t really expected to see her in his bed in somewhere besides a hotel room. Hotel rooms are for things to be left behind: mosquito bites and the story of his sister, wine and cheese and innuendos. A thousand other people would come through, essentially erase your existence there. A hotel was a place to forget. 

Scully shuts the laptop and sets it on the bedside table. “Mulder, come here.”

He goes to the bed and sits down beside her. She closes her eyes and leans into him, almost like they have done it a thousand times (which they have, practically, but never with so much between them, so much laid out on the table). He hears her low, trembly voice saying yeah,  _ well, I love you, _ her flinch. He smooths her hair absently.

“It’s going to be okay,” she says firmly, as if challenging anyone who dares to argue with her.

_ No _ , he thinks.  _ It won’t be okay, and I’m sorry for that, I never meant for this to happen.  _ He worries a little - just a little - that she will break without him. The rest of him thinks (hopes) that she will be okay, power on the way she always does. She is stronger than he ever could’ve imagined. He loves her, too, even though he won’t tell her, even now. 

///

Mulder doesn’t go easily into anything but sleep, drifting off easily and quickly. Scully watches him fall into submission, eyes shut, face half buried in the pillow. And then she waits at least another half hour or so before leaving the room, feet padding the cool wooden floor. She heads for the basement, tapping on the door of the Gunmen’s office before entering. 

“Scully,” Byers says in lieu of greeting. “Is everything okay?”

Scully nods, grabbing her elbows in some forgotten teenage gesture. “I, uh,” she says. “Had a question to ask. Well, really more of a favor, I guess.”

“What’s up?” asks Langly.

“You remember the chip? In the back of my neck?” Three nods. “If I removed it, could you take a look at it?” she asks. “Maybe try to duplicate it?”

They all look at her with astonishment. “Uh,” Frohike ventures. “Why do you…”

“Mulder’s dying.” There, she’s said it out loud; that makes it official. “Inoperable brain tumor.” She can tell by their expressions that this isn’t easy news to hear. “I-I’m not going to let it happen.” She puts a hand to the back of her neck, rubs the raised skin of the chip. “This chip cured me. If there’s a possibility that it could cure Mulder…”

“What about the possibilities of it killing you?” Byers says. “We don’t know the repercussions…”

“I’m willing to take that chance.”

“Mulder would be furious,” Langly says.

“He wouldn’t take the cure if you died,” Frohike adds. “He wouldn’t risk you for anything.”

_ And you think that doesn’t go both ways?  _ “That’s why I don’t want Mulder to know,” Scully replies calmly. “I would do anything -  _ anything _ \- to save him. And there’s always the chance that removal won’t kill me.” She doesn’t see this story having a happy ending, but she isn’t going to tell them that. “I need help,” she adds. “I would appreciate yours.”

They look at her solemnly, the most serious she has ever seen them. Finally, Frohike nods - and it surprises her that it’s him, but it is. “We’ll help you,” he says. “After this is all over, we’ll remove the chip and take a look at it.”

Scully bites back words building up in her throat -  _ what if it’s too late and he’s already dead  _ \- nods, and heads back upstairs to their room, slips under the weight of his arm, and presses her head against his chest. His heart's still beating, a live thing under her ear. 

///

The sun shines for the first time in days, at least for them. He finds it somewhat ridiculous, and closes the curtains in the bedroom. Scully watches him from the bed. “Vampire habits,” she says dryly. 

“The ones we saw could withstand the sun just fine, Scully.” He sits beside her on the bed. She grabs his hand, but makes no move to pull him closer, just sits and threads her fingers through his. 

“This is harder than I thought,” she says quietly.

He feels a stab of guilt for dragging her along on this road trip from Hell. “Do you want to go?” he asks. “You’re under no obligation. You could go out to California, be with your family.” 

“No…” she whispers. “I wouldn’t be able to get there anyway. I need to be here, with you.” She sucks in a breath. “That’s not what I meant.”

Oh. Mulder stares at her, wanting to ask, not wanting to hear the answer. If he hears it, that makes it real. “Do you mean…”  _ Me, being with me? _

“Hey, Scully, Mulder!” Frohike calls from somewhere in the house. “You all awake? We found something!” 

Scully stands. He can’t see her face; it’s too dark. “Come on,” she says softly. 

///

“Your theory about the hybrids was confirmed,” Byers says. “We’ve determined that the ships making the abductions are vessels, carrying the abductees to laboratories around the world. The ships themselves are where the majority of the…  beings are.”

“Right,” Mulder says, leaning back in his chair. “I don’t suppose we could just… shoot them down?”

“Something to that degree,” Langly says. He tapes a stack of papers with his index finger. “See, here’s all the information you could ever want on extraterrestrial beings. Their lifestyle, their habits… and, more importantly, how their ships work.”

Scully rubs her forehead tiredly. This is probably one of the more bizarre conversations from her time with Mulder, and this is the conversation that could decide the fate of Earth. The entire situation is bizarre, in fact. Like Mulder is the hero in a bad superhero flick, with corny sci-fi undertones. “And how’s that?” she asks tiredly. She didn’t sleep well the night before.  _ Nightmares are a bitch _ , Mulder would say. 

“There’s one main ship,” Langly continues animatedly. “And smaller ships. Like the queen bee in a beehive.”

“So,” Frohike jumps in. “If you take out the main ship, then  _ blam _ !” He smacks the table with the heel of his hand. “All the other ones go out.”

“Are you using that in a metaphorical sense?” Scully asks tiredly.

“Not at all, Agent Scully,” Byers reassures. “It’s in the style of a machine, really. The main ship is a stronghold. It has a kill mechanism that destroys all the ships, including itself.”

“So do we just blow up the ship?” Mulder asks. 

“It has to be activated from the inside,” Langly says. “So someone would have to enter the ship and enter the code.”

“It has a thirty second countdown, supposedly,” Frohike adds. “So whoever goes in would have a window to get out.”

“Okay,” Mulder says. “Okay, I’ll do it.”

_ No _ , she thinks, _ it’s too dangerous. We’ve got to wait and make sure you won’t die. _

“I mean, I don’t have a lot to lose,” he adds, and she flinches. She wants to scream at him that he isn’t being fair, what if she’d done this to him with her cancer?

“I’m coming with you,” she says. She wonders if she can change his mind so that she is the one to go when they reach the ship. Wherever the hell it is, anyway. “Where is the ship?”

“Landing in the Mojave Desert in Arizona, in five days.”

Arizona. Of course. She hates the desert, mouth stripped dry and sand hot against her skin. 

“Scully,” Mulder starts. “I don’t know if you should…”

She holds up a hand to stop him. “If you think you’re going without me, than you’re crazier than I thought.”

Frohike snorts. Byers watches them curiously, as if he can sense everything between them.

“Okay,” Mulder says. “Okay. It’ll take us a couple days to get there… I say we lay low until tomorrow and head out. We’ll need to account for accidents.”

“Fine.” They look over at the Gunmen for confirmation.

“We can set you up with a communications system that can’t be interfered with,” Byers says. “Mulder, if you’re planning on going in, then you’ll have to memorize the code.”

“Tell me what I need to know.”

///

Scully calls her mother from Frohike’s unregistered phone. She feels the need to tell her where she is, and she wants to know how Bill is, if he did ship out after all. “No, he listened to you,” Maggie says through the crackles over the line. “What the hell is going on, Dana?”

“We have a plan to stop this,” she says. “Don’t worry. Just stay with Bill and Tara, and I’ll be there as soon as I can.”  _ Hopefully having saved Mulder, and the rest of the world. _

“Is it dangerous?”

“No,” she lies.

Maggie is unconvinced. “Promise me you’ll be careful, Dana. Are you with Fox?”

She doesn’t bother lying about that; she told her mother she was going with him, and anyways, she’s not in high school anymore. “Yes.”

“Tell him to be careful, too.”

The words send an onslaught of dark thoughts about the fact that he is dying. Is this how he felt for all those months?

She asks Frohike to cut out the chip, and he says no. “We still don’t know the repercussions of this,” he says. “Mulder needs you.”

“He needs to  _ live _ ,” she says, near tears. 

“Damn it, Scully, I don’t want you to die anymore than I want him to,” he snaps. 

She doesn’t bothering trying to argue anymore.

Mulder is down in the basement almost all day, looking over things, memorizing the code. Scully reads, in a window seat, the coldest part of the house. It’s easier to forget about things immersed in the page, a philosophy she hasn’t paid tribute to since college. 

He shows up just as the sun sinks below the cornfield. “Hey,” he says, sliding his warm hands down her arms. “God, you’re freezing.”

Scully sets down the book. “Any luck?”

“Depends on how you define luck.” He motions to the living room. “Want to watch a movie, forget everything for a while?”

“What movie did you have in mind?”

He holds up the VHS tape with a gleeful grin. “ _ Caddyshack _ .”

She groans mockingly. “Come on, Mulder.”

“Hey, it’s a classic American movie!” he protests. 

It’s almost like if they can fall back into old habits, nothing will be wrong, so she plays along. “That’s what every guy says. It’s a guy movie.”

“Tell you what, Scully, I’ll let you pick sometime, and we can watch  _ Steel Magnolias _ .”

She doesn’t want to think about the future. She leans into him and pokes him in the arm, smiling teasingly. “So, _ Caddyshack _ ?”

He kisses her on the cheek. “Sure, Scully,” he says, leading her into the living room.

///

They leave early enough to be undetected by anyone, hopefully. Frohike pulls Scully aside a second early and promises to look for anything to do for Mulder while they are gone. She irons the anxiety out of her voice and thanks him. Snapping at the Gunmen will get her nowhere. 

Mulder drives. (“See, my arm really is feeling better, Scully.”) Scully sleeps, her head resting against the window. He checks on her regularly, eyes stealing over to her sleepy form, and brushes her hair out of her eyes. She looks smaller in sleep. He drapes his jacket over her and keeps going. He watches the sky turn from black to gray. 

///

“When I said, earlier, that this is harder than I thought,” she says. “I didn’t mean you. I meant the tumor… the apocalypse… just, everything.”

He stops the car and turns to face her. “Scully…”

“But not you,” she whispers. “Never you.”

He leans across the console and kisses her. He pretends his days aren’t numbered. 

///

They are stopped somewhere in Nevada, by a woman dressed in a police officer’s uniform. “Why is there a police officer on this road?” Scully asks.

Mulder leans forward, close enough to see the smudges seemingly on the woman’s eye. “Black oil disease,” he mouths at her, and reaches under his coat for his weapon. 

The woman taps on the window, and Mulder lets it down with his free hand, curling his fingers around his gun. “Sir, could you step out of the car, please?”

“What, no ‘license and registration, please’ routine?” he quips.

“Mulder,” Scully says warningly - although what she is warning him about, he doesn’t know.

He opens the door and steps out of the car, whipping his gun around to point at the woman as he goes. She lunges at him and grips his wrist like a vise, yanking the gun from his hand. They struggle for a minute, but the woman hits him hard in the head, and grabs him in a backwards hold, gun pressed to his side. He staggers in her grip, woozy.

“Let him go!” Scully has rounded the side of the car and is facing down the woman, her own weapon pointed at the woman. 

The woman tightens her grip on his arm. “You won’t shoot me,” she says carefully. “You won’t risk hitting him.”

“And you won’t shoot us,” she replies steadily. “You need us for something. What is it? Who sent you?”

“Scully,” Mulder pleads, blinking away the spots in front of his eyes. “Shoot her.”

Scully studies them, looking for an avenue in which to shoot. “Let him go,” she repeats. “Whatever you need us for, it isn’t worth your life.”

The gun explodes beside of him. Scully topples back with the force of it, hitting the ground with a sickening thump.

He always thought he'd scream when, _ if  _ it ever happened, but all he can manage now is a gasp. He pushes at his captor’s arms with some unexpected strength, breaking free and going down on his knees beside her, whispering, “No”, an unheard mantra. His head is spinning. Maybe it isn’t real. Maybe the whole damn thing is a bad dream, and he can have another chance.

“Scully,” he whispers. Her eyes are wide and painful, she is trying to catch her breath, and blood is soaking her shirt… He never thought she’d go first… which doesn’t matter, he shouldn’t say that because  _ she is not going to die _ . “You're going to be okay,” he says, mainly for his benefit, and reaches out to cover the wound with his hand. 

Hands grab at him, pulling him away. “No!” he shouts, fighting against them. “She needs help!” She mouths the first syllable of his name. She is bleeding. She is not moving… “ _ Scully _ !” 

Something strikes him in the head again, harder, and darkness falls over him.


	6. six

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this gets a little gory at the beginning, and is overall kind of dark? srry i promise this is going somewhere happy (i think, that is)

**six.**

Her only thought is that she should be dead. The bullet went through her chest. She is covered in blood. But still, that was hours ago and she still isn't dead. She should be dead. 

She needs to find Mulder. They took him to do God knows what. He could be hurt. He was hit over the head with a damn gun. He's probably worried, maybe even blaming himself. She needs to go after him. But she can't move. She lifts her hand to her chest and brushes them across. They come away sticky and red, but there is only raised skin, in the style of a scar. How is it even possible? How can she…

“Get up, Dana.”

The voice is cheerful, a tenor she recognizes from half-baked nightmares and the stench of nicotine. Scully opens her eyes. The smoker stands over her, token Morley in hand. She wonders if it's too late to bargain for Mulder's life. She doubts she'll need to bargain for her own.

“You're not dead, Dana. I'd wager it doesn't even hurt anymore.”

It's scarred. But this is impossible, there should be a hole, the bullet should have severed arteries, she should be dead from blood loss, without medical aid…

Scully sits up. A wave of nausea shakes through her, and she presses her fingers to her mouth. There's a twinge of copper. “How did you find me?” she rasps angrily.

“When the infected officer returned with Mulder, she informed me of your shooting,” the smoker replies, taking a drag on his cigarette. “I decided to come and help you.”

“Why?” 

He's amused. “I've always liked the two of you. And besides, I knew what would happen, and I wanted to aid you.”

“No,” Scully says sharply. She remembers Mulder screaming for her, pushing against his captor. “I mean, why did you take Mulder? What do you want with him?”

The smoker extends a hand, as if to help her up. Scully hesitates, then takes it, staggering on her legs. She is still shaking, hands trembling. “The surgery done on Mulder was for my benefit, true, but I never intended to kill him. I wished to cure him, the way I cured you.”

“How?” Her voice is a shout, but it goes unheard; there is no one around for miles. 

“You'll remember the chip I gave to Mulder. The one that cured you of your cancer.”

Scully's hand goes to the back of her neck, feels the slight bump under the skin.

“That was a chip specifically designed with alien technology,” the man explains. Smoke filters out of the end of his cigarette, vanishes when it hits the skyline. “It is designed to strengthen the immune system, strengthen it beyond human imagination. Once in your system, the chip first sought out your cancer and ridded your body of it. And then it went to work on other damaged parts of your system.”

Scully hears her voice as if from a great distance.  _ As a result of my abduction, I'm unable to have children… _

“The chip made you perfect, really.” The smoker sounds pleased. “It cured you of your infertility. It prevents any diseases, any wounds, healing them as soon as they enter - although more severe wounds take more time, of course.” He motions at her in all her bloody goriness.

Scully hears another voice, Mulder's this time.  _ The doctor says it's the fastest recovery he's ever seen… _

“The chip also staves off effects of ageing. Essentially prevents your death, as long as it’s inside you.” The smoker raises a hand to his own neck. “The project was a secret, known about only by me. You and I are the only ones to have them. And soon, Mulder.”

_ The Smoking Man is dead… no body was found… _

Scully almost chokes on the horror of it all. So this is what Mulder bargained for, so this is what has saved her a thousand times. “What about the alien virus? I was infected, I almost died…”

“My apologies. I meant the chip will cure any  _ human  _ ailments. The chip and the virus came from similar sources, so the chip couldn't protect you from it.” The smoker takes a drag on his cigarette smartly. “It won’t kill you if you remove it, it would only control you if I wanted it to, but really, why would you want to remove it, Dana? I won’t use the chip against you again, you have my assurance of that.”

Scully can't contain her ultimate horror at this entire situation. She is an abnormality. She has gained something unattainable, something she never wanted. And she'll have to spend eternity without Mulder…

“You're giving Mulder the chip,” she says. “He'll be immortal. Like me. Like you.”

The smoker nods smartly. “I'd say you owe me, Dana,” he says. “I gave you and Mulder immunity, the ability to be together forever. More than that, I can save your families. Give you everything you ever could want in this reshaped world.” His eyes glint. “So what do you think, Dana? Will you join me?”

Scully's hand grips her gun in the hand the smoker hadn't grabbed. “I'll think about it,” she snarls, and brings her hand up, whipping the butt of the gun across the smoker’s face. Surprise breaks across his face before he pitches backwards unconsciously.

Scully goes down on her knees beside him. There is a small wound along his forehead, bloody and swollen, but it will heal fast, and she has no time. He doesn't deserve the immortality he has. No one does, for certain, but someone like him who will revel in it deserves it even less.

Scully dips her hand into her pocket and closes her hand around one of the pocket knives purchased for emergencies. She flicks the blade out, and sets it to the back of his neck, directly over the chip.

///

She stands in the shower, not feeling the hot water. The water at her feet is red with her blood, her clothes tossed aside on the floor. She drove into the hotel in a trance, a near coma, breaking into one of the rooms. She is trying to feel something besides terror.

_ I don't know how I even entertained the thought. People don't live forever.  _

Her heart beats faster. It shouldn't be beating at all.

_ How do I die? _

_ You don't.  _

Scully switches off the water and watches the red swirl down the drain. 

She tries to convince herself she shouldn't be upset by the fact that she survived a shot to the chest. How is it any different from receiving surgery and surviving, really. But all she can consider at the moment is the fact that millions of people don't receive this choice. Now, even, in the apocalypse, they don't get a specialized out, an extra chance to live.

_ If I’d removed the chip, I would have died when I was shot. _

She thought she might die anyway. Almost expected it, really, and she’d been willing to die for him the same way that she’d always been. Maybe, she’d thought, he’d be okay if she died in the Gunmen’s house, peacefully. He’d have carried on. But she wouldn’t have died, assumedly, not there. She would’ve died on the side of the road, bleeding out into the dust, her last image of Mulder’s wide and pleading eyes. 

_ Mulder could live. _

It may be selfish, but she wants desperately for him to receive the chip, if only long enough to filter out the tumor. But he is still in the hand of enemies, ruthless enemies. She removed the smoker’s chip. What if he returns to the compound and orders Mulder's chip removed out of anger? Or worse. Really, she doesn't know  _ what  _ they could be doing to him, and she doesn't want to consider it. She knows she has to get to him before that. And there is still a world to save. 

She is alive. Whether she should be or not. 

///

His first waking thought is of her, always her, on the ground soaked in blood, gone, dead… He closes his eyes in an attempt to make the images go away. They don’t.

She's dead. She has to be, there's no medical assistance for miles and the bullet hit her in the chest. She is a good doctor, but she can't save herself. She's dead. And he's dying.

_ I didn't want it to happen this way. I wanted her to live.  _

“Fox,” a small voice says. He opens his eyes. His sister is there, staring down at him with wide eyes. “Fox, you need to get up.”

He’s on some kind of metal table, but he’s not strapped down. He closes his eyes again. “I can’t, Samantha.”

“You need to.” He feels some small chill that is probably her touching him. “You’ve got to save the world, remember?”

Oh, yeah. The code. He can still recite it perfectly, can still hear her voice reciting it. Damn, he wonders how long that’ll last. 

Scully would tell him to go punch in the code. She’d probably be glaring at him, arms crossed, looking the way she does - did - when he put the reports off on her at the end of a really long day…

“Where am I?”

“On a ship,” Samantha says. “Come on. I can show you where to find the controls.”

He follows the spirit of his sister down the corridor of the ship. There’s movements, behind closed doors, but no one’s talking. He realizes he doesn’t know if the aliens talk or not. According to Arthur Dales, they do. “Is there anyone in the control room?” he mutters. Samantha shakes her head. 

It’s eerie, being alone with a ghost, especially now. He wonders why Scully hasn’t come, wonders if he even wants her to. He doesn’t know if he wants to see her like this. The back of his neck stings. 

The room looks like every science cliche ever. There’s a window in the front, coated with desert dust, and he can see the sand beyond it. There’s some sort of control panel, with buttons he doesn’t understand, and a keyboard he definitely does. “What kind of fucking B-movie,” he mutters. “Samantha, can you check and make sure that there’s no humans in any of the other ships?”

“What, you assume I can teleport or something?”

“Can’t you?” he snaps. He’s not going to let anyone else die because of him. 

Samantha sighs. “Give me a second.” She disappears. Mulder types in the code. And waits, finger over the Enter button. 

“No one besides Them,” Samantha says. “Go.” 

He hits Enter, starts the Countdown in his head.  _ 30… 29… _

“Fox, go,” Samantha says. Her hand passes over him like a chill. He stands there, staring at the screen. Scully’s dead.

“Fox!” Samantha shouts. She’s not scared, she’s angry. He sees more faces past her - his father, and an unfamiliar man - is that Scully’s father? - and a little girl in a hospital gown, with her thumb in her mouth. And suddenly, he can hear Scully’s voice too, telling him to get moving, to get out. He wonders if he’s imagining it. 

He runs down the corridors, counting off in his head.  _ 15… 14…  _ He falls down at the hatch, tugs at the edges.  _ 12… 11… _ It falls away beneath him, and he hits the ground hard, pain shooting through his ribs.  _ 5… 4… _ He runs. 

The ship explodes behind him, and he hits the ground, hard, arms going up to cover his head. And then it’s over. The heat is worse than summer in the desert, biting into his back. The wind is chilly and dry. He closes his eyes. 

“Mulder,” Melissa says. “You need to get up.”

He lifts his head to look up at her. “Bring me Scully,” he begs, voice cracking. “Please, Missy, please.” He doesn't want to see her shimmery figure standing there, past his reach, but he needs to see her. Needs to tell her that he loves her, that he's sorry (so fucking sorry that he ever dragged her into this in the first place), that he'll be there soon. God, he misses her already. How long has it been, a day?

Melissa stares at him with some confusion. “Dana?” she says. “Mulder, I haven't…”

“She's dead,” he whispers hollowly. “Oh God, I saw her. Oh my God.”

Melissa doesn't answer. He thinks she's gone. He lets his head slump back against the ground in defeat. Scully is dead.

///

Scully hears the explosion before she sees it, a loud, cacophonous sound that rocks the car. She floors the pedal and reaches for her gun. The sleeves of his shirt fall over her hands.

She parks on the edge of a ravine above the explosion, and shoves her way out of the car. “Mulder!” she shouts.  _ Oh God, what if he didn't get out?  _ She scans the dunes. The ticking of the watch he gave her is too loud in her ears.

She sees him slumped over on the sand, yards away from the fire. She isn’t sure if he’s alive or not. “Mulder!” she screams again, starting the trek downhill. 

///

He hears her voice, screaming his name, and raises his head a little to look for her. She’s there, but he doesn’t understand why she’s sprinting down a hill towards him, understand why she’s holding a gun, understand how she could be wearing his shirt, not stained with blood…

“Scully?” he gasps. The air has left him. He can’t breathe.  _ She’s alive, alive, alive. _

She falls to her knees in front of him. “Mulder.” She reaches out to touch his cheek. 

He clutches her, almost clumsily, pulling her against him. “Scully,” he mutters into her hair. “My God, Scully. I thought I’d never see you again.” He blinks away tears. They fall into her hair. 

“Mulder,” she says against his collarbone. “It’s okay. I’m here.”

“Scully,” he whispers. He can feel her heartbeat, warmth, proof that she’s here, alive. “Scully, you okay?”

“We’re okay, Mulder,” she whispers. “We’re okay.”


	7. seven

**seven.**

_five months later_

The air is almost unusually hot and sticky. Scully refolds the sheets of paper and shoves it back into the folder with a sigh. She'd asked the Gunmen to get some information on the chips. Almost two months after, she'd received the information, but it’s straightforward. The closest thing they have to data is Spender’s shooting and her cancer and her shooting.

She still hasn't told him.

There's the sound of knuckles at the door. She doesn't bother hiding the papers as she goes to answer it. If it's her mom, she won't ask questions. Scully pushes the door open to reveal a badge in her face.

She grins. “Get recertified, Mulder?”

Mulder lowers the badge to reveal his matching smile. “Yep. You're talking to one _Special Agent_ Mulder again.” He kisses her quickly before pressing another badge into her hand. “And check it out, we've got a ‘his and hers’ matching set.”

“Just what I always wanted.” Scully pulls him into the apartment, shoving the door closed behind him. “I expected you to use your key, Mulder,” she teases.

“I wanted to surprise you.” He tugs at her hand excitedly. “I had some other news, actually.”

“What is it?”

Their eyes meet. “I'm cleared, Scully,” he whispers exuberantly. “The tumor’s gone, completely.”

She'd expected it, but she can't stop the leap of excitement in her stomach. “Mulder, that's…” She pulls him into a hug, holding him tightly with a rush of relief. _He’ll live, he’ll live,_ she thinks wildly, blindly.

He presses a lingering kiss to her forehead, and steps back to meet her eyes. “I just… I hadn’t seen the ghosts in a while,” he whispers. “And so I made an appointment, and…” He grins, little-kid like. “It was just gone. The doctors are wondering how it could’ve happened.”

The guilt rushes up at her then. He’s saved, it worked. But he still doesn’t know _what_ saved him.

He looks past her to the couch, to the papers in the file she left open. “You get started on work early?” He walks over to the couch, picks it up and examines it. Scully doesn’t bother trying to hide it. He looks up at her in confusion. “Chips? Scully, what is this?”

“There's something I need to tell you,” she says softly.

///

After they’d gotten up off of the ground, before, they had gone to the car and slept wrapped around each other in the backseat. The next morning, they’d started the drive to Bill’s, Mulder refusing to let go of Scully’s hand. The roads had been practically empty, not a lot of people realizing that it was over, it was all over. “You saved the world, Mulder, you saved the world,” Scully told him. When they’d gotten to Bill’s house in San Diego, Maggie had met them before they were halfway across the lawn, and sobbed into Scully’s shoulder.

They’d slept in the spare room for almost a week after that. Mulder still refused to leave her side, and Scully had shot withering glances at anyone who had looked at them sideways. When they weren’t sleeping - and it was impossible to sleep all the time, with a toddler in the house - they had lay in the bed without moving. Mulder told her about the ghosts there. “I saw Samantha and my dad,” he told her in a voice meant for secrets. “And…” He stopped, as if not sure if he could go on. After some reassurance, he told her. “I saw Melissa,” he said. “I talked to her, actually. And I saw Emily, I think, and maybe your father.” She hadn’t been surprised, but she was a little envious of it all, that he’d gotten to see her family and she hadn’t. It was because he had been dying, wasn’t it? Why hadn’t they come to her when she was dying?

“Missy approved of me,” he’d added softly. “By the way.”

They’d stayed at Bill’s house for a month. When they’d finally ventured out of the bedroom, everyone had been awkward around Mulder, at first. He ignored it, throwing himself into working with Skinner to get the information needed to the government so that they could start rebuilding the country, and working with the Gunmen to get said information. Still, it hadn’t been hard to spot the change in their relationship. Maggie had cornered Scully one morning when she was drinking coffee at the table. “You and Fox are together, aren’t you,” she’d said, without any hints of questioning in her voice. Scully had nodded, and her mother smiled at her, patting her hand. “I like him,” she’d said, and Scully had wanted to tell her that it really didn’t matter, that she and Mulder were probably anything but a conventional relationship, and she didn’t know where it would end up but she did know that, at the moment, neither of them wanted to be far away from each other. She wanted to tell her mother that nobody else besides Mulder made sense, that Mulder was so intertwined with her life that she couldn’t imagine anyone else. She almost blurted out that Melissa approved.

“You’re in danger a lot, when you’re with him,” her mother had added. “But you always come back. And I’ve seen how much he cares about you.” She still isn’t able to read her mother on how much of her Mulder speech was genuine or not, but she suspects most of it was. While she’s sure her mother resents him a little for all these years of pain, she also suspects she likes him. (She’d say it’s hard not to like Mulder, once you get to know him, but she’s clearly biased.)

Mulder talked to Skinner a lot, explained that the threat was neutralized, gone. The Consortium had been eliminated; Fowley was dead, and no one had any idea what had happened to the Smoker. Scully still hadn’t told him about the chips. He didn’t tell Skinner about the labs, though. “If the hybrids are there, it’s better that no one knows about them. God only knows what people would do to experiments like that,” he’d said, and Scully remembered being surprised that he didn’t want to prove anything. He called his mother to make sure she was all right. Scully helped him to make sense of the reports he was sending in, the events of what had happened. They made sure it was all anonymous. Skinner wanted to give them all medals, or something of the like, for what they’d done, but Mulder had refused. Scully was glad; she didn’t want to be known as the world’s savior, not when all she’d done was cut a chip of an old man’s neck.

They’d gone back to DC slowly, as the government picked itself back up. For the moment, they didn’t have jobs, but money was the least of anyone’s worries at the moments, and Mulder had a pretty hefty bank account besides that. He’d offered to give her whatever she needed, and she’d shot back that she could very well take care of herself, and they’d both fallen asleep on Mulder’s couch that night. They’d spent a lot of time together since everything, Mulder not wanting to leave her, Scully not minding at all. ( _Forget talking about your relationship, forget couple’s therapy - the apocalypse will build and strengthen a relationship. It sounds like some bad personal ad,_ Mulder had said.)

They never talked about it, their relationship - then again, they’d never been much of the talking type. It wasn’t like they could go on dates - but then again, they’d never been much of the date type, either. Mulder had suggested movies after the power was turned back on in his building. There was nothing to talk about, really. She hadn’t left his apartment until the third month. He’d showed up at her apartment every night for the fourth month.

She tells him about the chips in a low, faltering voice. It wasn’t her fault, but she’d kept it a secret. She remembers the shock of not dying - what if that had happened to him, on a case? She should have told him sooner.

///

“I always knew that there was a reason you never explained how you survived that,” he says softly. “I just… thought maybe I'd seen it wrong.”

Scully reaches for him, squeezes his shoulder. “I'm sorry. But… I've been trying to process this ever since it happened. And I thought that if I told you… you'd take the chip out before it healed you,” she finishes in a whisper.

“I wouldn't have done that to you.”

“I wasn't sure how you'd feel about the source.”

“Well, I’ll admit, it’s not admirable, but it saved you. And me.” Mulder takes her hand and squeezes it.

“I just… I don’t want to think about never finding out,” she whispers. “Living forever. What if all this had never happened, what if the smoker hadn’t cured you or told me, and you’d died and I…” She shudders, not wanting to think about it.

“I’m not going to die, Scully,” he says, stroking her hand soothingly with his thumb.

“Well, that’s fairly obvious. You _can’t_ die, and neither can I.” Scully snorts. “It seems like an unfair advantage to me.”

“Well, what do you mean?”

“I mean that we never have to worry about sickness. We could be in a fight with people and they’d go down and we’d just keep coming.” Her eyes are haunted, like she’s thought about this a lot.

“I don’t think that’s necessarily the case,” he counters carefully. “I mean, it took you most of the day to get up after being shot, right? And it took you some time to heal after you were injured in New York.”

“God, Mulder, that’s not even the point,” she hisses. She buries her face in her hands, shaking it back and forth. “The selfish part of me wants you to keep it in. So you wouldn’t die.”

“I never told you this, but… once, after Fellig, I hoped he was right about his immortality,” he whispers. “I don’t ever want to think of you dying.”

“Mulder, no,” she says to her palms. “I’m not leaving you and you’re not leaving me, okay? That’s how this works.”

“Okay,” he says. “Okay, so what do we do?”

“I don’t know. We could take it out, but…” _It seems unethical, unnatural, it’s wrong to leave it in…_ But she imagines Mulder almost dying again. It’s enough to convince her to leave them in. “We could leave them in,” she says. “But I don’t… do you want to live forever?”

Mulder’s hand finds her knee. “It might not be the worst idea,” he says. “We could continue our work.”

Scully makes a choking sound, and lowers her hands to look at him. “Only you would want to live forever to continue our work.”

He smiles a little, offers, “Keep fighting.”

“Oh, God, don’t tell us this is our bad superhero origin story,” Scully groans, smiling a little back. With these chips, they have time, to do everything they want to. Time she didn’t think they had.

Mulder’s grin widens. “I’d save the world with you again, Scully.”

“The way I see it,” she begins. “It would work better if we left the chips in. At least for the time being. You know, the X Files can be a little… hazardous. And we could take them out if we ever wanted to.” _We’d never have to watch the life drain out of each other again_ , she thinks. _Wouldn’t have to worry constantly - it might not make the nightmares go away but it might help, and I’d like to not have to worry about you, to know you’d be okay if I didn’t get there in time..._

She can tell from his eyes that he’s thinking about the same thing. His hand moves from her knee to take her hand. “Want to live forever, Scully?” he whispers like it’s a marriage proposal. (What with the lives they lead, it practically is.)

“Only with you, Mulder.” She closes the distance between them, and kisses him. “Only with you.”

///

Scully comes back to the apartment when it’s already dark outside, Mulder asleep on the couch. She pokes him in the shoulder as she sits next to him. “Wake up,” she whispers. “I brought you a sandwich.”

“Mmm,” he mutters as he wakes up. “Thanks, Scully, I knew I picked you for a reason.”

She passes him the paper wrapped sub. She isn’t sure how to be normal after deciding to be immortal life partners.

“Missed you,” Mulder says suddenly, tugging at her wrist.

She laughs. “I was only gone for an hour, Mulder.”

“Don’t care. I missed you.” He pulls her closer until she’s curled around him, her head on his shoulder. “I didn’t think I’d have this,” he says, and she’s not sure if he’s referring to the brain tumor, or whether either of them would ever make a move or not, or just having someone in general. “Thank you.”

“I love you,” she mutters, head drooping onto his shoulder. She feels him kissing her head. She lets her mind wander from the pregnancy test in the Walgreens bag she’s hidden behind the sandwich bag.

“I love you, too.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i’m getting ready to dive into an excessively long author’s note, so if you don’t care about any of that shit, just scroll reeeaaally fast.
> 
> anyways. this all started with a compulsive need to write a post-col story. i’ve never really liked apocalypse stories, but i’d read several good ones as of late, and wanted to see what i could do with it. but. i knew there were a lot of post-my struggle ii and 2012 stories, so i didn’t want to try any of those. and then i thought of this one. the other thing that appealed to me about a millennium au was that it allowed me to play fast and heavy with the beginning of msr, something we’ve never seen onscreen. 
> 
> for some reason, i’ve never been a huge fan of s7. idk why. this was kind of my way of trying to develop a better relationship with it. i also tried to capture some requiem/s8 aspects of msr. i brought in mulder’s brain tumor because i felt like it was a wasted opportunity by the writers, and one rarely brought up. i brought in the immortal scully storyline because i love the theory a whole lot more than i love the idea of it being canon. it was weird to work with stuff that hadn’t happened yet, but i tried to make shit canon compliant. hence the chips - besides it being incredibly convenient, it explains how csm was able to survive everything, among other things. i included the ghosts because i wanted to. it was probably cheating to make it so mulder knew samantha was dead, but i didn’t want to deal with that realization on top of all the other angst, and also, i felt like if mulder was dying, according to elegy, he could see ghosts (i actually rewatched elegy for this, ok) and that samantha would visit him. basically, this was a way of playing with a lot of stuff i like about the show, and about fanwork.
> 
> (also this is kind of weird but the only reason i ended up finishing this is because i started thinking about an immortal scully story where she throws herself into preventing mulder from dying, and then i realized that i should probably finish the one i had instead.)


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